Grayson Bane
There was value in being able to do things that others couldn’t. For Grayson, that had meant making himself and his brother into the most amazing, unstoppable team of thieves the galaxy had ever seen. To do that, he’d had to become proficient in everything from neurosurgery to electrical engineering to computer programming, in both human and alien languages. There was no shortage of artifacts out there that others were happy to pay the Banes to steal for them.
Doing so meant prestige for the new owners, a growing reputation for them, and Coalition credits or the currency of choice for wherever they were based out of at the time. The harder the job, the more of everything everyone got. It hadn’t been an easy life, but it had been a satisfying one.
Then had come their first tour in prison when a client turned on them, then them breaking out and going on the run, then being recaptured and doing another stint in prison. It became a pattern that Grayson didn’t fight too hard because they ended up getting as big a reputation for breaking out of places as they did for thieving. Plenty of people were willing to pay top credit to learn the ins and outs of the various Guild and Coalition penitentiaries, and the Bane brothers were more than happy to pass on what they’d learned for a price. What did they care about “compromising galactic security” and all the other loads of shit the prosecutors piled onto their cases against ’em? The galaxy had never done much for the two of them, after all.
Then came the job that landed them in the Bor-Turia Penal Colony, an escapade that went bad thanks to a group of Water Guild bastards installing new security just a day before the heist Grayson and Mason had been paid for. And now… hell. Here they were. Living in close quarters with a crazy Thassian and a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears scientists, on this moist bunghole of a planet, trying to figure out ancient tech that might blow you up as soon as work the way you expected.
Well, all right, that part was actually pretty neat. Not that Grayson would ever admit it.
[Aww, but it’s cute!]
“Shut it,” he muttered, tightening the last few parts on the newly reinforced axle of the rover. Fixing that had taken the longest, much of it spent waiting around for compounds to meld and stick together, so Grayson had redone the tread on the wheels in the meantime.
[No, really. We love your hobbies. We would never have thought to model the tread after the Martian dune-rollers you and us used to play around with as kids.]
“If you don’t shut your head up, I’ll beat you about it until you do.”
[You wouldn’t do that to us,] Mason crooned. [Especially not after we saved you from the bloodthirsty Thassian.]
He was right, of course, but it didn’t do to let him get a big head about it. “Saved me?” Grayson scoffed. “You were about to get us thrown back into the clink, and this next time might be our last! What do you want to bet they’d throw me into a hole so deep I forget what light looks like, and you’d get stuck as a footrest under the warden’s desk permanently?” Not that Grayson wouldn’t do everything in his power to keep that from happening. From the feel of his brother’s amusement across their connection, he knew it.
[So overprotective,] Mason laughed. [You know we could always have escaped once we got back to the home system. You worry too much.]
“Maybe you don’t worry enough,” Grayson muttered. Maybe none of them did – except for the Centauran, who seemed to do enough worrying for the lot of them. “How long do you reckon we’ll be out here anyway, eh?”
[The original contract said one standard Earth lunar month. More for travel, of course.]
“God, I hate having to measure everything in Earth standard.”
[Yes, you’ve complained about it before, shut up now. That leaves us with twenty-nine more days of exploration here.]
“Ugh.” Twenty-nine more days mucking about this red-tinged hell with this lot? It couldn’t get much worse.
[You’re so dramatic.]
“Shut up and get in so I can test whether the new welds will hold.” If the rover could carry Mason’s weight, it could carry the rest of the group with no problem.
Grayson watched as his brother shuffled over and clumsily pulled himself into the center of the rover. Gotta work on smoothing out his movements next. The rover’s shocks whined a bit, but nothing broke. “Good enough. I’ll tell ’em to load up.” Grayson opened the door between the rearmost storage compartment of the ship, where the rover was stored next to the ramp it would drive down, and shouted, “Hey! Get your arses back here, we’re ready to go!”
[So classy.]
“Shut up.” Did Mason have to have an opinion on everything? “You’d be getting us into ten times the trouble I ever have if your mouth survived the fire, you know that?”
[Yeah, yeah.]
Shortly thereafter, the rest of the crew filed into the storage compartment and took their places on the rover. Six took the driver’s seat for himself, then activated the exit and deployment of the ramp. As soon as it was stable, he drove the rover down it and took off for the distant refinery – ship – whatever it really was to a bunch of ancient Caridians.
Grayson might have mused on it more if he wasn’t being jostled around so hard he almost fell over the edge of the bloody rover. “Holy Mount Mons, slow the hell down!” he shouted.
“I merely wish to be as efficient as possible!” Six said over the noise of the motor, clacking his mandibles cheerily. Too cheerily – this lunatic was enjoying driving like a maniac. Grayson was about to tell him off again, when the next bump hit hard enough that Dr Drexler – who hadn’t had time to fasten their seatbelt – flew into the air.
Mason caught them before they could fall off. “Nice catch,” Grayson muttered as his brother resettled the flustered doctor in their seat.
[We’re a gentleman, ask anyone.]
Grayson spent the rest of the trip to the Nexeri focusing on not losing his rations before they got to the bloody monolith. Once they finally slowed down and came to a stop outside of it, he – and probably everyone else – breathed a sigh of relief.
“OK, tasks for today,” Dr Drexler said, hopping off the rover and pointing to Divak. “We’ve got the capacity to load two tons of liquid Xenium onto the ship in storage compartment B, so that’s your job. Check to ensure the bottles that you choose are firmly sealed – we don’t want to risk any leaks when we get back up into space.
“You two–” they pointed at Grayson and Mason “–keep trying to figure out the refinery system. I want to know how deep those tunnels go. I’ll scan for the Xenium myself later and we can compare our results.
“Meanwhile, Six and Dr Lifhe and I will continue to work in the library and the laboratory, respectively. Sound good to everyone?”
There was a ragged chorus of “yeah” and a few nods, which seemed to satisfy them. “Great! Let’s get to work, then.” They led the way inside the ancient ship, and Grayson was gratified to see both the scientists take their helmets off the moment the door was shut behind them all.
Decided it’s not so dangerous after all, did you? Knew you delicate flowers were all buzzed up about nothing. Their group dispersed, and Grayson headed for the nearest refinery stack a few hundred feet away. “We’re gonna send Right-arm down again this morning,” he said. “Best we can do without proper probes, and from what you checked of the machinery down there, there should be plenty of rungs for you to cling to as you head down. Battery all good?”
Mason didn’t say anything. Grayson turned around and saw his brother standing exactly where he’d come in, motionless. “Mason? Mason, what the hell are you–”
[Lefty says he saw something.]
Grayson groaned and marched back over to his brother. “Lefty is a reactionary piece of shit; he spends half his time daydreaming and the other half disobeying orders. Ignore him and let’s get to work.”
[But Grayson, he’s right. The rest of us looked, too.] Sure enough, Mason’s eyes were turned to the side, where the tiny pod-like ships were arrayed in their neat rows… except for the last two.
“What about it, then?” Grayson asked. “What do you see?”
[It’s what we don’t see that’s the problem.]
“If you don’t stop speaking in bloody damn riddles, I’m going to–”
[The bodies are missing.]
“The…” Grayson abruptly ran out of ire. He turned to the spot where the ancient Caridian corpses had lain yesterday, little more than dried out husks. Dried out husk or not, though, there was nothing in this place that should have been able to move them. They hadn’t let in the wind, and there were no living creatures other than themselves around who could have shifted them.
Well, that settled that.
“Betcha it’s Divak, that bitch. Tryin’ to spook us. You go take a look, see if she shoved the poor sods farther back, an’ I’ll call in the rest of ’em.” He activated the collar comm unit. “Right, you bastards, who was it moved the bodies, huh? Because apart from bein’ disrespectful, that’s just nasty.”
“What?” Dr Drexler’s voice sounded first – of course it did, they seemed to welcome any invitation to start babbling. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talkin’ about the bloody corpses of the bloody Caridians,” Grayson snapped. “They’re gone. Divak, get your ass over here and tell us where you stashed ’em!”
The Thassian had moved deeper into the crates of Xenium since they’d arrived, but she popped her head up at this. “You dare accuse me? I haven’t touched them.”
“The hell you haven’t! You’re the one keeps complaining of being bored, right? Decide to make a little of your own fun, eh?”
“Certainly not. Dead meat is of no interest to me,” Divak said, coming closer and theatrically licking her lips. “I prefer it live.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a bad bitch and we all know it. That’s why you’re the one who moved the bodies, isn’t it?” Grayson sneered. “What, thought you’d give us a scare? It takes more than that to get a rise out of me.”
“I don’t think I care to know what gets a ‘rise’ out of you, you filthy human.”
“No need to get your tail in a knot about it, you Thassian piece of–”
“Whoa-kay!” Dr Drexler ran into the room, hands held up in the universal sign for calm down. “There’s no need to get personal about people’s species. We can’t help how we’re born, right? Let’s focus on the issue at hand.” They looked toward where Mason was disappearing into the crack between the pods. “The bodies are gone? You’re sure?”
“Would I have caused this hullabaloo if I wasn’t sure?” Grayson asked. “Think I don’t have better things to do with my time? Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Very well.” Six took over, looking at each of them. “And did anyone here move them, for any reason at all?”
“You doubt my word?” Divak was nearly hissing with anger. “I already told you, I have no interest in the dead. I–”
“I happen to know that Thassians are actually disturbed by the bodies of the dead,” Six said calmly. “Perhaps because of the smell, perhaps because of the reminder of your own mortality. There are plenty of instances of Thassians destroying bodies on battlegrounds.”
“That’s completely different.”
“Perhaps it is. You, of course, would know better than me, but don’t test me by lying to me about it.”
Divak bristled for a moment, then said, “These corpses were ancient. Uninteresting. Useless. I didn’t touch them.”
“Thank you.” Six turned his gaze to Grayson. “What about you and your brother?”
“Hey, I don’t give a shit about a few old ass corpses lyin’ around as long as they’re not in my way,” Grayson said. “Besides, Dr Drexler already scanned ’em for biological contaminants and found nothin’. So what do I have to worry about?”
“I did scan them,” Dr Drexler confirmed. “And I…” They suddenly blanched and reached for the portable multitool lying against their hip. “It’s nothing,” they muttered as they punched in a password and adjusted the settings rapidly. “We’re fine, just let me confirm… oh, shit.” They looked frantically at Grayson. “I’m detecting biologicals here.”
“Be calm,” Six said, clearly taking his own advice given the way his antennae waved slowly. “We ourselves were in here yesterday, most of us without our helmets. It’s entirely likely that the biologicals you’re detecting right now belong to us.”
“No, they don’t!” Dr Drexler was starting to sound panicked. Grayson was more worried about the Centauran, though – his eyelids fluttered so quickly they looked like they were about to fly right off his face. “I entered all our genetic profiles into the scanner when we first got together on the ship; it knows to discount us! It even knows to discount all species modifications based on common diseases, so it’s not about to ping like this if one of us is coming down with a cold. This is…” They lifted their head and stared into the spot where Mason had shimmied in between the little ships a minute ago. “This is something different, an entirely new biological signature. It wasn’t here yesterday.”
[Grayson…]
Grayson diverted all of his attention to his brother. “What is it?” he said.
[We can see something back here.]
“Get the hell away from it,” he barked, turning in a panic toward the pods. He couldn’t see where Mason had ended up, which meant he was too far away. “Get back out here, now.”
[It’s not one of the bodies. It’s… I’m not really sure, but it’s covering the wall back here.]
“Get out here!”
“What does he see?” Dr Drexler asked anxiously.
[It looks like – well, here. Look.] Mason opened his mind up and shared his vision with Grayson, and a moment later he saw it for himself, zoomed in and focused on even though he could feel Mason backing away. It looked… odd. Definitely organic, but glowy, like something you’d see in a cave.
“The hell is that?” he asked.
“Describe it,” Dr Drexler said tightly.
“Green and clingin’ to the walls in the back. Seems to be glowin’, or – what’s the word – phosphorescent, like a–”
He was cut off by a shrill squeal from Dr Lifhe, who was moving from all fours onto his hind legs as he began to pace with agitation. “We have to get out of here!” he shrilled. “We have to get out of here now! We need to get back to the ship before we’re infected!”
Infected? What the hell, infected? “Mason, get back here right now.”
“The mold didn’t utilize an airborne vector of infection before,” Dr Drexler said, managing to make their voice soothing for the sake of their hysterical friend. “There’s no reason to think it will now. Nobody’s touched it, and Mason is incapable of inhaling the spores – right?” They verified with Grayson, who was beginning to think this could be a big damn deal.
“Right. His lungs don’t work that way.”
“There. See? It’s going to be fine, we just have to–”
Crash! One of the pod ships in the back row next to the wall had suddenly flown straight up in the air, landing with a metallic bounce a few seconds later. It happened so abruptly, and with such violence, that they were all stunned into silence for a moment.
Grayson was the first one to recover his voice. “What the hell?” he snapped. “Mason, quit screwing around and–”
[It’s not us! We’re not strong enough to lift one of these things.] Sure enough, a second later his brother reappeared at the edge of the unsettled pod and scuttled back over to them, spider-style.
Divak brought her gun up to bear. “The Centauran coward is right, for once,” she said. “We need to return to the ship and leave this planet immediately.”
“We can’t get back into the home system without an extensive quarantine first,” Dr Drexler said. Dr Lifhe whimpered, but Grayson could barely hear it over the sudden rush of blood through his head. Quarantine?
“You just said we weren’t infected!” he shouted.
“I said it was probably fine, but I don’t know that for sure! Do you want to be responsible for bringing–”
Another pod flew into the air, rolling across the tops of its brethren before falling off and coming to a stop just a few meters away from them. Corinus screamed shrilly, and Divak’s hands tightened on her rifle.
“We will return the ship to orbit and wait out our quarantine there,” Six said. “Let’s get back to the rover now.” He turned and began to head for the small door they’d come in.
“Wait.” Dr Drexler grabbed his sleeve. “Look.”
“What’s there to see?” Grayson demanded. Another pod flew into the air, this one a row forward from the last. Whatever had been percolatin’ back there before they arrived, it was well on the boil now. “There’s nothing in front of us and somethin’ nobody wants to see behind us! Let’s get the hell out of here!”
“We shut the door after we came in!” Dr Drexler insisted. Their face was unusually gray. “I know we shut it all the way. I wouldn’t have taken off my helmet otherwise! It shouldn’t be open. So how did it get cracked open?”
Their nascent question was answered as the door, open only a few inches, suddenly jerked back a few more. Into the space crept a… hell, Grayson wasn’t sure what to call it. At first glance it looked like a dead tree branch, spotty with age and eaten through here and there by insects. Only there were no trees or insects on Sik-Tar. It worked its way farther into the space, and now he could see the mottled gray surface of it was touched with bright green up by the joint, and–
Oh shit. That was a joint. That thing was a leg. It bent and sidled, maneuvering deeper into the crack, and soon it was joined by another limb – an arm this time, creeping in over the top of the door. It got a grip on the heavy metal oval, jerked it backward, and ripped the entire thing right out of the wall. A second later a series of long, skinny limbs compressed themselves and slipped in through the relatively small opening, unfolding into a–
“Bloody hell,” Grayson whispered. “That’s more than one body.” It was… shit, he couldn’t even guess – at least two heads, he could see them overlapping each other on top. Four arms, five – no, six legs. There hadn’t been this many Caridian bodies in this entire ancient ship – where had it gotten the other bits from?
“Xenos,” Dr Drexler whispered, their eyes bright with fear and… excitement? Freak. “It’s a completely new type of Xeno. I didn’t know the mold could resurrect tissues that had been dead for so long, but it’s taken the Caridians and turned them into… into revenants.”
The once-dead revenant’s lower head had six scythelike mandibles attached to the bottom of its jaw around a center point, like petals on the universe’s most hideous flower. It clacked them menacingly, shifting more of its weight onto its longer, thicker front legs, then charged.
Dr Lifhe broke. He turned and ran away from the rest of them on all fours just as Divak opened fire, focusing on the revenant’s bottom head. Bits of carapace shattered, but there was nothing beneath that shell for the rounds to destroy – no brain to speak of, or if it had one, it wasn’t in the bloody thing’s head. It ignored the shots completely and went after Dr Lifhe, closing the distance with terrifying speed as it ambled forward on its six malformed, overlapping legs. They ought to be gettin’ in the way of each other, ought to be makin’ it clumsy, but it moved as gracefully as any predator closing in for the kill.
“No!” That came from Dr Drexler, who’d surged forward while the rest of them were standing there stunned. They had their scanner up between them and the revenant. With a twist of a knob here and a push of a button there, they shot a bolt of literal lightning at the creature, enveloping it in bright, sizzling blue. The revenant stiffened, every one of its limbs sticking straight out before it collapsed in a heap, the moldy spots on its carapace smoking.
“Oh wow!” Dr Drexler looked at their multitool with a pleased expression. “First time trying to reverse the lightning rod function on this thing. It worked better than I–”
The closest leg of the revenant lashed out, hitting them squarely in the side. The scanner tumbled to the floor as Dr Drexler flew backward, hitting the ground and rolling until they collided with the nearest of the refinery machines. They groaned and tried to sit up, one arm crossed over their midsection, before falling down again.
The revenant was jerkily getting back on its feet. “Screw this,” Grayson muttered, looking at his brother. “We’re gettin’ out of here.”
[Let’s go.] They sprinted for the door, clear now that the enormous Caridian bug-zombie was out of the way.
They were almost there when another pod flew into the air, this one sailing right over their heads and impacting the wall ahead of them – right where they were about to exit through the ruined oval door. Mason reeled backward, hooking extensors into Grayson’s collar and hauling him back as well. There was a gap there now, big enough for Grayson to get through, but Mason wouldn’t make it unless he took himself to pieces first. They didn’t have that kind of time. “Shit!” Grayson turned around and saw another shape slink out of the shadows.
This one wasn’t like the first revenant. It was smaller, more like the normal Caridian it had started out as, just… thickened. Thickened by mold, which clung to it like a layer of armor, hard and dense along its limbs and still in a state of ooze around its joints, lending them both strength and flexibility. Unlike the other revenant, which had eyes about the size of Six’s, this one’s were huge, easily three times bigger.
Grayson knew he was gawping, but he couldn’t stop, boggled by what he was seeing. It was crazy, like something out of a nightmare… that’s what this had to be, a nightmare. He’d fallen asleep on this boring-arse mission, and this was just his mind playing tricks on him, right? It was as good an explanation as any, until he saw the smaller rev reach for another pod and pick… it… up, like there wasn’t any such thing as leverage and weight differentials and goddamn physics.
[Grayson!] Mason jerked him off his feet and backward, and a second later the pod landed right where he’d been standing before ricocheting in their direction. Mason jumped them over it, jarring Grayson’s back something fierce in the process.
“Ow, shit!”
[Sorry, but there’s no time to be gentle! Come on!] Mason slung him onto his back and spider-ran for the crates.
“Don’t lead them in there!” Six called out, one of his unfortunately revenant-reminiscent pincers extended. “If they manage to break open one of the bottles of Xenium, everything could explode!”
“He’s right,” Grayson grunted around the pain. “Take us up instead.”
[Got it.] Mason changed his run into a great leap, landing them on the side of the wall. Grayson wrapped an arm around his brother’s neck and held on for dear life as Mason began to climb. He glanced down to see how the others fared.
Divak had taken cover behind one of the pods, and was firing at the larger revenant with startling accuracy, given how shit she’d been at it yesterday. She’d already destroyed the uppermost head and was working on the lower one now, but the reanimated Caridian, which up until now had seemed like nothing but a set of basic impulses and urges, seemed to have learned a measure of wariness. As Mason watched, it reached up and broke off the stalks of its newly grown eyes off with a sickening crunch and pressed them against its abdomen. Globs of virid green mold coagulated around them, attaching the eyes to their new location. A moment later the revenant charged again – not toward Divak, but toward Dr Lifhe, who was helping Dr Drexler to their feet.
Welp, they’re goners.
Except they weren’t, not quite. The Centauran picked Dr Drexler up and threw them past the belt of the refinery they’d wound up against after firing their lightning bolt, hurling them straight back into the belly of the refinery. He jumped in after them just as the revenant got close enough to lash out with one of its thorny, secondary sets of arms.
Huh, no screams and no blood. Lucky bastards must have made it in there. Not that it would do them much good – they were cornered, and until someone else got the revenant out of there, they wouldn’t be able to–
[Hold on!]
Mason’s steady climb turned into a flying leap from the light-filled column he was climbing to the smooth wall half a dozen feet to the left. Where they had been a moment ago, a light sizzled and died as the smaller revenant’s claw punctured right through its hard casing. The revenant turned its vast, dull eyes toward them, then reached out with its other claw and began to climb in their direction.
“Go, go, go!” Grayson screamed. Mason let all of his extensors loose, scrambling across the wall like a spider with an ungainly egg sac on its back. He was fast, but not fast enough. Whether the revenant was going through a rapid learning process or reviving ancient instincts embedded in its DNA, it was clear they weren’t going to be able to outpace it for long.
“Gonna have to put me down,” Grayson panted. His arms were on the verge of giving out. “Get low enough so’s I don’t break my legs and I’ll drop, and you can act as a distraction while I–”
[No.]
“Mason! Stop being a brat and listen to me! You need to–”
[No! We’re not going to let you sacrifice yourself to save us! That’s stupid, we need you! We’re in this together or not at all!]
“You idiot, you–”
Grayson lost his train of thought completely when Mason abruptly let go of the wall, twisting in midair so that he fell on his hands and feet as they hit the ground. Grayson grunted again – his back was killing him, but at least he was alive – and stared grimly ahead as Mason maneuvered his way around the crates of Xenium, heading for the hallway across the hangar that led to the labs and whatnot the scientists and Six had all been so enamored with lately. Somewhere to hide and lick their wounds, somewhere to–
Crash! The revenant landed close behind them, only it hadn’t been careful about where it put its feet. It fell right into one of the crates of Xenium, sending barrels of it rolling in all directions.
A sharp smell filled the air – the smell of the most powerful fuel source in the galaxy, maybe the universe. It was liquid death for everybody on this side of the planet if someone set it off, though.
“Don’t fire on this one!” Grayson shouted to Divak, who had already pulled her rifle back with a sour expression on her face. “We’ve got to get the bastard outside!”
“How?” she shouted back. “If you haven’t noticed, it’s fixated on you! It won’t stop until it takes you as its rightful prey!”
Hell, maybe she was right. Maybe it was fixated on them…
Maybe it could be fixated on just a part of them.
“Send Lefty over to get its attention,” Grayson muttered to Mason. “Then you can–”
[We’ve got it, we’ve got it.] In a flash, Left-arm Mason detached from the central rig. He scuttled on his extensors straight back toward the revenant, which stepped right over him on its inexorable path toward them.
Come the hell on! “Be a bigger arsehole to it, Lefty! Holy Mount Mons, the one time I want you to be a nuisance and you can’t manage it.”
[Oh yeah? Watch this.]
In a flash, Lefty slid between the revenant’s legs, crawled straight up its body, and used its main hand to rip one of its enormous eyes right off its head. The revenant hissed, its ossified mandibles clacking, and reached for Lefty.
Who was already booking it for the door.
Mason took cover behind one of the battered pods just a little way down from Divak, but it was hardly necessary at this point. The revenant followed Lefty straight to the ruined oval doorframe. The creature then shifted the lopsided pod out of its way, able to slip through much easier than the huge, composite revenant had. It left a thin trail of liquid Xenium behind on the floor.
Grayson turned to glare at Divak. “Well? What are you waiting for? Shoot the bloody thing!”
[Not this close,] Mason warned.
“I can’t yet, it’s too close,” Divak replied in an annoying echo of his brother. “Keep it from catching up to that arm and perhaps shooting it is not out of the question.”
Grayson looked at Mason. “You got–”
[Yeah, yeah, we heard you. We’ll keep it moving. Lefty’s going as fast as he can, but it’s a lot harder to handle the big stuff when you’re only a few feet long.]
Grayson closed his eyes and focused on the connection between himself and his brother’s mind, watching through Lefty’s vision as it scurried as fast as its extensors would carry it across the wet, rock-covered plain outside.
“One hundred meters…” Grayson said.
“Keep it moving,” Divak replied, heading over toward the ruined door. She took a firing stance there, raising the gun to her shoulder with fresh purpose. “I can’t fire until it’s farther away.”
“Two hundred meters.” Grayson felt ill as his vision slipped from distant to close, one second aware of everything around his own body, the next clouded with the glistening red landscape of Sik-Tar. Lefty was moving as fast as he could, but they could all feel the way he had to dodge and jump to avoid the beast behind him. His mind was going crazy trying to track his pursuer, find the best route forward, and process the sensory data from over a dozen extensors.
“Three hundred meters.”
Lefty’s battery was getting hot, hot enough to make his micro-brain feel feverish. It made staying properly oriented even harder, and before the Banes knew it Lefty was slip-sliding down a steep crevice, unable to catch himself. The revenant slid down after him.
“Get him up again!” Divak ordered. “Get him up, or I won’t be able to hit the creature until it’s coming back at us!”
Lefty managed to climb back out of the ravine, but not without a casualty – one of the revenant’s claws sliced three of the extensors right off his back. He kept going, though, doggedly racing across the inhospitable ground, and the revenant followed.
“Four hundred meters.”
Something loud was happening on the other side of the room, sounds of screaming and crunching and crashing, but Grayson couldn’t focus on that right now. He was caught in Lefty’s plight, caught up in this bitter chase and the end he knew was coming. The feelings he got from Mason were of both pride and horrified nausea.
“Five hundred meters.”
“Finally,” Divak snarled, and at last she fired her gun. In the distance, the sky blossomed in a huge, fiery tower.
In the Bane brothers’ heads, a distant piece of them stuttered, briefly overwhelmed with sizzling heat, then went dark.
Two seconds later, a compression wave from the explosion hit the Nexeri. Divak had already leapt out of the way of the gaping hole where the door had been, but Mason, still stunned from losing a piece of himself, was too slow. The heat cooked his exposed forehead, making blisters pop up immediately.
“Shut your lids, damn it!” Grayson reached around and threw his hand over his brother’s eyes, but the damage was done. Mason’s sight went from clear to filmy, then wavered with the wateriness of lymph and blood.
Then Mason, like Lefty, went dark.